Instant Messaging Divides Teens From Adults

Teenager Michelle Rome can't imagine life without instant messaging. Baby boomer Steve Wilson doesn't care that it even exists. They're a part of an "instant messaging gap" between teens and adults. And the division is wide, says an AP-AOL survey on how Americans use or snub those Internet bursts of gossip, happy date-making and teen tragedies that young people exchange by the hour while supposedly doing homework.

Rome, 17, a high school senior in Moristown, New Jersey, spends more than two hours each day spending and receiving more than 100 instant messages - or "IM-ing." I use it to ask questions about homework, make plans with people, keep up with my best friend in Texas and my sister in Connecticut," she said. "It has all the advantages."

The 51-year-old Wilson, a mechanic in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, prefers using e-mail and the telephone. Instant messaging "is the worst of both worlds," he said. "It manages to combine all the things I don't like like about each. I'm more or less a dinosaur. I use the Internet for things like buying car parts, reading celebrity gossip."

Almost half of teens, 48% of those ages 13-18, use instant messaging, according to the poll. That's more than twice the percentage of adults who use it.

According to the AP-AOL poll:

- Almost three-fourths of adults who do use instant messages still comunicate with e-mail more often. Almost three-fourths of teens send instant messages more than e-mail.

- More than half of the teens who use instant messages send more than 25 a day, and one in five send more than 100. Three-fourths of adult users send fewer than 25 instant messages a day.

- Teen users (30%) are almost twice as likely as adults (17%) to say thay can't imagine life without instant messaging.

- When keeping up with a friend who is far away, teens are most likely to use instant messaging, while adults turn first to e-mail.

- About a fifth of teen IM users have used IM to ask for or accept a date. Almost that many, 16%, have used it to break up with someone.